MusicfestNW 2013: Brian Posehn

Can an alt-comedy fartiste finally grow up—at age 47?

Brian Posehn has been earning a living
making people laugh for more than two decades, primarily by telling fart
jokes. Recently, though, Posehn has done something he once vowed to
avoid: tell jokes about being a father.

“I
had talked about it on my last CD, before my son was born, just about
how I never wanted to be one of those comics,” Posehn says. “The old
joke was, if I ever talk about how precious my kid is, I want you to
punch my baby.”

To
deal with the conundrum of creating material about a topic he once
considered hacky and worn out, Posehn decided to do what he does best:
make more fart jokes.

On his latest standup album, the aptly titled The Fartist,
Posehn manages to tackle the more difficult aspects of raising his now
4-year-old son—like how best to introduce him to the original Star Wars trilogy—while maintaining the edge that’s made him a favorite in the alt-comedy world.

“I
started to notice that it didn’t matter what the topic was if the comic
is good,” Posehn says. “When I first started seeing Louis C.K. talk
about his kids, I was like, ‘This can be done in a fresh way if you just
do your spin on it.’ I found my angle. I always knew in my heart I
would find a fresh way of talking about it.”

Fatherhood isn’t the only recent change in Posehn’s life. A featured comedian in the 2007 documentary Super High Me, Doug Benson’s love letter to pot, Posehn has been weed-free for two years.

By
becoming a dad and swearing off marijuana, Posehn has proven it’s never
too late to grow up, even at 47. But have the changes in both lifestyle
and material had a negative impact on a comic with a decidedly
heavy-metal fan base?

Posehn
says not at all. Chalk it up in part to some fans becoming fathers
themselves, along with the staying power of various Posehn-related
projects such as The Comedians of Comedy and Mr. Show. Or maybe it’s just because, like a fine wine, the best fart jokes get better with age.

“There’s
a little disappointment every once and a while where [a fan] will go,
‘Hey, man, I rolled you one but I know you don’t do that anymore,’”
Posehn says. “[But] there’s been no backlash at all because I’m doing my
thing. It’s still me. I haven’t really changed.”